Let me tell you something: from then until I left that prison, in every free moment I had, if I was not reading in the library, I was reading on my bunk... ...months passed without my even thinking about being imprisoned. In fact, up to then, I had never been so truly free in my life.
Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, p. 176

Fairy tales don’t teach children that dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales teach children that dragons can be killed.
G.K. Chesterton, English writer

I am the sum of all I read. The truth is, reading about life has always proved much more satisfying than living it.
Jonathan Hull, journalist and author

There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them. -- Joseph Brodsky, poet

Why was it, I wondered, that I was most passionate talking about books I had loved? . . . Those books honored me; those books changed me. Alone, the greatest writers would sit with me and, in their own voices, tell me everything there was to know about the world. --Pat Conroy, author